An exam school is a student win

I am disappointed that a committee investigating the prospect of an exam school or an International Baccalaureate program within the Worcester public schools will not recommend the exam school.

An exam school is one in which enrollment is based on the result of a standardized test score, while an IB program requires students to pass exams in six subject areas after the 11th and 12th grade.

There are some understandable concerns in opening an exam school, and Tom Del Prete, director of the Adam Institute for Urban Teaching and School Practice at Clark University, cogently addressed many of them in an “As I See It,” column published in this newspaper on Jan. 30.

If you haven’t read his column, which also discussed alternatives to an exam school, it would be worth your while to do so.

But while I respect Mr. Del Prete’s point of view, as well as the work he has been doing in urban education at Clark University for years now, I am inclined to believe that an exam school in Worcester would be a positive, rather than a negative step.

I am particularly not sold on the suggestion that creating a separate school for some of the brightest students would negatively impact the academic learning environment of the general population.

Some have suggested, for example, that robbing a class of its brightest students will deprive the remaining students of strong academic role models and that classroom teacher the joy of working with top-notch students.

And still others have warned that an exam school, because its enrollment is based on standardized test scores, will not reflect the demographic diversity of the city.

School Committee member Brian A. O’Connell said he has never been comfortable with such reasoning, because while “we have heard comments about what the change would do to other schools, students and teachers, nobody ever seems to say how it would benefit our brightest students,” he said.

“Our students have done well over the years,” he said.

“Many have gone on to excel in college and in life, but there are students who with an additional boost could reach great academic heights, and we really need to test the measure of what they can achieve.”

I agree.

There is a difference, I believe, between ensuring quality educational opportunities for all students and trying to socialize academic aptitude, which is the risk we run when we dismiss the concept of an exam school on the grounds that it might endanger less gifted students.

What if the current academic environment is masking a subculture of underachievement?

What would be the result, for example, if the Worcester public schools were to run a list of its top student performers in Grades 6 through 12, using grade performances, Advanced Placement and SAT results?

Would minority students be prominent among these top performers?

If they were, then there shouldn’t be any concerns about the students’ ability to get into an exam school.

On the other hand, would minority students be woefully absent from the top performance list?

Again, if they were, the problem would not be the exam school, but how they are currently being prepared to compete with the best and the brightest.

At the very least, an exam school would give motivated parents and students a goal at which to shoot, particularly if an entry criterion requires applicants to have been enrolled in the Worcester public schools for at least six years.

It is true that the school would be open to a limited number of students, but the educational benefit to everyone who worked to get in would be enormous.